Sinema began her political career as an activist for the
Green Party before joining the
Arizona Democratic Party in 2004.[2] In the
2012 elections, she was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, becoming the first openly bisexual member of Congress in the history of the United States.[3]

Kyrsten has two siblings, an older brother and younger sister.[17][18] Her father was an attorney. Her parents divorced when she was a child and her mother, who had custody of the children, remarried. With her siblings, mother, and stepfather, Sinema moved to
DeFuniak Springs, Florida, a small town in the
Panhandle.[18] When her stepfather lost his job and the bank foreclosed on their home, the family lived for three years in a remodeled
gas station.[19] Sinema has said that for two years they had no toilet or electricity while living there.[20] She later recalled, "My stepdad built a bunk bed for me and my sister. We separated our bunk bed from the kitchen with one of those big chalkboards on rollers. I knew that was weird. A chalkboard shouldn't be a wall. A kitchen should have running water."[20] Sinema was raised as a member of
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.[21] According to journalist
Jonathan Martin in The New York Times, Sinema has given "contradictory answers about her early life", and Sinema's mother and stepfather had filed court documents saying they had made monthly payments for gas, electricity, and phone bills, even though Sinema had said they had been "without running water or electricity".[22] Asked whether she had embellished details from her childhood, Sinema said, "I've shared what I remember from my childhood. I know what I lived through."[22]

In 2002, The Arizona Republic published a letter from Sinema criticizing capitalism. "Until the average American realizes that capitalism damages her livelihood while augmenting the livelihoods of the wealthy, the Almighty Dollar will continue to rule", she wrote.[28]

In 2004, Sinema won the Democratic primary for Arizona's 15th district, with 37% of the vote. David Lujan also won election with 34% (there are two seats in each district).[31] Sinema was subsequently reelected three times with over 30% of the vote.[32][33][34] In 2009 and 2010, Sinema was an assistant Minority Leader for the Democratic Caucus of the Arizona House of Representatives.[35]

Tenure

According to Elle, "her first public comment as an elected official came in 2005, after a Republican colleague's speech insulted LGBT people. 'We're simply people like everyone else who want and deserve respect', she passionately declared. Later, when reporters asked about her use of the first person, Sinema replied, 'Duh, I'm bisexual.'"[18]

In 2006, Sinema sponsored a bill urging the adoption of the
DREAM Act.[37] Also in 2006 she co-chaired Arizona Together, the statewide campaign that defeated
Proposition 107, which would have banned the recognition of
same-sex marriage and civil unions in Arizona. (In 2008 a similar referendum,
Proposition 102, passed.[38]) Speaking to a magazine in 2006, Sinema was asked about "new feminism", and responded, "'These women who act like staying at home, leeching off their husbands or boyfriends, and just cashing the checks is some sort of feminism because they're choosing to live that life. That's bullshit. I mean, what the fuck are we really talking about here?'"[39][40][41] After facing criticism, Sinema apologized and said the interview format was intended to be a "light-hearted spoof". "I was raised by a stay-at-home mom," she said. "So, she did a pretty good job with me."[42]

In 2008, Sinema led the campaign against
Proposition 102, another referendum that would have banned the recognition of same-sex marriage in Arizona. Proposition 102 was approved with 56% of the vote in the general election on November 4, 2008. Sinema chaired a coalition called Protect Arizona's Freedom, which defeated
Ward Connerly's goal to place an initiative on the state ballot that would eliminate equal-opportunity programs.[43]

In June 2009, Sinema was one of 32 state legislators appointed by President
Barack Obama to the White House Health Reform Task Force, which helped shape the
Affordable Care Act.[44] "Thanks in part to her hard work in improving the bill", Sinema was invited to attend the Obamacare bill signing at the White House in March 2010.[45]

In 2010, she sponsored a bill to give in-state tuition to veterans; it was held in committee and did not receive a vote.[46]

In 2010, Sinema was named one of Time magazine's "40 Under 40".[47] The
Center for Inquiry presented Sinema its Award for the Advancement of Science and Reason in Public Policy in 2011.[48]

U.S. House of Representatives

Elections

2012

In June 2011, Sinema said she was considering running for the
U.S. House of Representatives in
2012. She lived in the same Phoenix neighborhood as incumbent Democratic congressman
Ed Pastor, but was adamant that she would not challenge another Democrat in a primary.[49] On January 3, 2012, Sinema announced her bid for Congress, in the 9th congressional district.[50] The district had previously been the 5th, represented by freshman Republican
David Schweikert; it contains 60% of the old 5th's territory.[51] Schweikert had been drawn into the 6th District—the old 3rd District—and sought reelection there.

Although Sinema was not required to resign her State Senate seat under Arizona's
resign-to-run laws (since she was in the final year of her term), she did so on the same day that she announced her candidacy. On August 28, 2012, Sinema won the three-way Democratic primary with nearly 42% of the vote. Her opponents, state Senator
David Schapira and former
Arizona Democratic Party chairman
Andrei Cherny, a former speechwriter in the
Clinton administration, each finished with less than 30% of the vote.[19][52][53]

In the general election, Sinema ran against Republican nominee
Vernon Parker, the former mayor of
Paradise Valley.[19] Sinema was endorsed by The Arizona Republic.[19] The campaign was described as a "nasty",[54] "bitterly fought race that featured millions of dollars in
attack ads".[55] Parker ran
campaign ads that accused Sinema of being an "anti-American
hippie" who practiced "Pagan rituals".[56] The Republican-aligned outside group
American Future Fund spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on attack ads against Sinema.[40][57] When Sinema's religious views were raised as an issue, her campaign stated that she simply believes in a
secular approach to government.[58]

The November 6 election was initially too close to call, because Arizona election authorities failed to count more than 25% of the votes on election day.[59] Sinema held a narrow lead over Parker, while provisional and absentee ballots were still being counted.[60][61] On November 12, when it was apparent that Sinema's lead was too large for Parker to overcome, the
Associated Press called the race for Sinema.[62] Once all ballots were counted, Sinema won by 4.1 percentage points, over 10,000 votes. Libertarian Powell Gammill finished third with 6.64% of the votes.[63] When she took office on January 3, 2013, she became only the second Anglo Democrat to represent the Valley of the Sun in over three decades. The first,
Harry Mitchell, occupied the seat Sinema now holds from 2007 to 2011.

2014

Sinema ran for reelection in 2014, and was unopposed in the Democratic primary, which took place on August 26, 2014. She faced Republican Wendy Rogers in the general election.[64][65]

According to Roll Call, Sinema billed herself as bipartisan. This was seen as a response to her district's voting pattern. It was drawn as a "fair-fight" district, and voted for President
Barack Obama by just 4 points in 2012.[25] In September 2014, she was endorsed for reelection by the
United States Chamber of Commerce, becoming one of five Democrats to be endorsed by the Chamber in the 2014 congressional election cycle.[66] She was reelected with approximately 55% of the vote, beating GOP nominee Wendy Rogers by 13 points.

2018 U.S. Senate election

Sinema at a U.S. Senate campaign event in Phoenix, Arizona, in October 2018

On September 28, 2017, Sinema officially announced her
candidacy for the Class I United States Senate seat held by
Republican incumbent
Jeff Flake, who declined to seek reelection the next month.

In March 2018, Sinema donated to charity $33,800 in campaign contributions she had received from
Ed Buck, a prominent Democratic donor who came under scrutiny after a homeless escort died of a drug overdose at his California home in 2017.[71] She had previously donated to charity $53,400 in campaign contributions from people with ties to
Backpage, a website that was seized by the
United States Department of Justice after it was accused of knowingly accepting ads for sex with underage girls.[72][73]

Federal Election Commission filings released in April 2018 showed Sinema had raised over $8.2 million, more than the three leading Republican primary contenders combined.[74]

During the 2018 campaign, Sinema refused to debate her competitor in the Democratic primary, Deedra Abboud, an attorney and community activist.[75] Sinema won the August Democratic primary for the Senate seat. Her Republican opponent in the general election was fellow Arizona U.S. Representative
Martha McSally.[76][77] She received the endorsement of the
Human Rights Campaign.[78]

While Abboud said she would vote against the nomination of
Brett Kavanaugh to the
Supreme Court, Sinema "said she wanted to delve deeper into Kavanaugh's writings and interview him personally before deciding". She said she was "running on the issues people care about most, including offering quality, affordable health care and promoting economic opportunity".[79] In the summer of 2018 Sinema said she would vote against
Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) for
minority leader if elected to the U.S. Senate. "The Democratic leadership has failed Democrats across the country," she said. "I am unafraid to say what I believe about what I think our party needs to do and I think our party needs to grow and change."[80]

Journalist Jonathan Martin wrote in The New York Times in September 2018 that Sinema was running "one of the most moderate-sounding and cautious Senate campaigns this year, keeping the media at arms-length and avoiding controversial issues", and said her campaign was generally reluctant to bring up President
Donald Trump.[22] According to Martin, both Republicans and Democrats said that Sinema had "few major legislative accomplishments to her record" and was running "on a political image that she has shaped and reshaped over the years. And nothing is more central to it now than her childhood homelessness."[22]

Economics

Sinema has voted for federal stimulus spending.[97] She has said: "Raising taxes is more economically sound than cutting vital social services."[98]

In 2015, Sinema was one of just seven House Democrats to vote in favor of a Republican-backed bill to repeal the
estate tax, which affects about 0.2% of deaths in the U.S. each year (estates of $5.43 million or more for individuals, or $10.86 million or more for couples).[99] That same year, she voted to change the
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's leadership from a single director to a bipartisan commission.[100][101]

In 2016, with Republican congressman
John Katko of New York, Sinema cosponsored the Working Parents Flexibility Act (H.R. 4699). This legislation would establish a tax-free "parental savings account" in which employers and parents could invest savings tax-free, with unused funds eligible to be "rolled into qualifying retirement, college savings or ABLE accounts for people with disabilities without tax penalties".[102] In September 2018, she voted "to make
individual tax cuts passed by the GOP [in 2017] permanent".[103] She was one of three Democrats to break with her party and vote for the tax cuts being made permanent.[104]

LGBT rights

According to a profile in The Advocate, "Sinema has her sights set on advancing LGBT rights."[105]

Foreign policy

While a law student at Arizona State University, Sinema organized pacifist protests, including against the Iraq War.[106] She also opposed the war in Afghanistan at the time.[107] She supported the
Gulf War.[107] In 2006, she said she opposed "war in all its forms".[106] After joining Congress in 2012, Sinema said that her views on military force had evolved, and that "you should never take military intervention off the table. When you do so, you give an out to a rogue nation or rogue actors."[106] Josh Lederman of The Hill reported that "she said she favors aggressive diplomacy, crippling sanctions to combat proliferation, and swift, multilateral intervention as a last resort".[106][107] She supports the use of military force to stop genocide, such as in Sudan, Somalia and Rwanda.[106] She wrote a doctoral dissertation on the 1994
Rwandan genocide that Lexington Books published in 2015.[108][109]

After the
September 11 attacks on the United States, Sinema was involved in organizing a Phoenix-area group called the Arizona Alliance for Peaceful Justice (AAPJ). According to Lederman, "The group's mission statement at the time called military action 'an inappropriate response to terrorism' and advocated for using the legal system – not violence – to bring
Osama bin Laden and others to justice."[107] Sinema wrote: "As one of the core organizers against the war from day one (September 12, 2001), I have always and will always continue to oppose war in all its forms."[107]

On September 15, 2018,
CNN reported that Sinema, as an antiwar activist in the years after
9/11, "led a group that distributed flyers depicting an American soldier as a skeleton inflicting 'U.S. terror' in Iraq and the Middle East." The flyers "promoted a February 2003 rally organized by Local to Global Justice, an anti-war group Sinema co-founded". Sinema was described in news reports as an organizer and sponsor of the rally and was "listed as the point of contact for the event". One flyer referred to "Bush and his fascist, imperialist war", saying, "Government is slavery", and describing laws as "cobwebs for the rich and chains of steel for the poor". CNN said that such positions were "a contrast from the more moderate profile she has developed since her 2012 election to Congress".[110]

In October 2018, CNN reported on Sinema's "past ties to far-left groups" and "extensive past as a progressive activist", writing that "Her events and associations in opposing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – and her early years as a Democratic lawmaker in Arizona – frequently brought her into contact with the left-wing fringe." In 2005 and 2006, she co-hosted an
Air America radio show with
9/11 trutherJeff Farias.[111]

Guns

Sinema favors
gun control measures such as requiring background checks on gun sales between private citizens at gun shows, and requiring a license for gun possession.[112] In 2016 the
National Rifle Association (NRA), which opposes gun regulations, gave Sinema a 29% rating.[89] The Gun Owners of America (GOA) have given her a "D" rating.[113]

Health care

Sinema voted against repealing the
Affordable Care Act,[114] but has called for reforms to the law.[115] In a 2012 congressional campaign debate, she said the health care law wasn't perfect, and that in Congress she would work to amend it to make it work effectively.[116] Sinema voted to delay the imposition of fines on those who did not purchase insurance in 2014. She also voted to repeal the Medical Device Tax and for the Keep Your Health Plan Act of 2013.[117][118][119]

Speaking about healthcare policy, Sinema said, "I used to say that I wanted universal health-care coverage in Arizona, which went over like a ton of bricks. Turns out, Arizonans hear the word 'universal' and think 'socialism'—or 'pinko commie'. But when I say that I want all Arizonans to have access to affordable, quality health care, Arizonans agree wholeheartedly. Same basic idea, different language."[120]

Immigration

State Representative Kyrsten Sinema attending a protest at the
Arizona State Capitol on the day of the SB 1070's signing

Sinema was one of 24 House Democrats to vote in favor of
Kate's Law,[123] a bill that would expand maximum sentences for foreigners who attempt to reenter the country, legally or illegally, after having been deported, denied entry or removed, and for foreign felons who attempt to reenter the country.[124]

Sinema opposed
Arizona SB 1070. She has argued that mass deportation of undocumented immigrants is not an option and supported the
DREAM Act. Her 2012 campaign website stated that "we need to create a tough but fair path to citizenship for undocumented workers that requires them to get right with the law by paying back taxes, paying a fine and learning English as a condition of gaining citizenship."[121] In July 2018, she broke with her party by voting with Republicans against abolishing
ICE.[127]

Privacy

In June 2013, Sinema became one of 29 original cosponsors of the bipartisan LIBERT-E (Limiting Internet and Blanket Electronic Review of Telecommunications and Email) Act, along with Representative
Justin Amash. The legislation would limit the
National Security Agency (NSA) to only collecting electronic information from subjects of an investigation.[128]

In July 2013, Sinema joined a bipartisan majority and voted against an amendment to a defense appropriations bill (offered by Amash) to prohibit the NSA from monitoring and recording details of U.S. citizens' telecommunications without a warrant.[129]

Telecommunications

In 2016, Sinema was one of just five House Democrats to vote for a Republican-backed bill barring the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from regulating
broadband rates. Her vote broke from her party; other Democrats were strongly opposed to the measure, and President Obama said he would veto it if it passed.[130]

Sinema has been the first openly bisexual member of the U.S. House of Representatives, the first openly bisexual person elected to the U.S. Senate, and the first woman elected as a U.S. Senator from Arizona.[3][138]

2016

2018

Numbers are incomplete, as of the evening of November 12, 2018; however, many news outlets have called the race for Sinema and the Republican candidate
Martha McSally conceded on November 12, 2018.[81][82][83][84]